English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

LWTBP

07:55

Hey, guys. This statement The text is well-written and the cover, beautiful. I always forget what is the removal of the second 'is' after 'cover' called. Is it 'ellipses'? And should there be a comma after 'cover' or is it a matter of preference?

Anonymous

Gapping.

caub

I'm trying to remember an old but famous (pop) song, a girl singing something like "trust me", "trust me", or "judge me" maybe .. then "Don't ..." or something like that, can't remember

Pretty vague, well, maybe I'll find it some day, nvm

LWTBP

08:37

@snailplane Thanks! So, the 'gapping comma' is pretty much mandatory.

Anonymous

08:52

I think you should use it if it makes the sentence clearer. I don't think it's mandatory.

LWTBP

Cool.

Shafizadeh

10:57

Does anybody know what's the meaning of following sentence?

> I need to get my ass to the office

Anonymous

The basic meaning is 'I need to go to the office.' but it sounds a bit more urgent and is markedly informal.

Anonymous

Ass-metonymy :-)

Anonymous

Only slightly less crude with butt instead.

Shafizadeh

I see, thx

terdon

11:14

7

Q: Where does "my ass" come from?

The usage of my ass to mean me is now relatively common. My impression is that it originated from AAVE and has since been included in various other dialects. The NGram below implies it became popular in the 70s: However, that is only for the specific usage of save my ass and might not be repre...

Shafizadeh

@terdon +1

@terdon you have just 14k rep there???!!! I though you are king of English :-)

terdon

@Shafizadeh haha, hardly! Certainly not in this company!

Shafizadeh

:-)

SmokeDetector

11:54

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, no whitespace in answer, repeating characters in answer: Is "per E-Mail" an English phrase by sadgasdgasdg on english.stackexchange.com

Anonymous

Zap!

Arrowfar

14:24

@Mitch I see, thanks for the info.

@Mitch Sorry for the late reply, this is the first time I’m popping in chats since yesterday.

@Mitch No, actually I was looking at a sentence a user asked here a few days ago here. I was looking for the instances of “jump into the first job offer” on corpus.

Laters.

Arrowfar

15:13

@Mitch By the way, remember this discussion we had in the past about politics? I was kind of avoiding the question on purpose because you know politics and public chats don't go well together :) We can discuss that or anything like that on Gmail chat anytime if you are interested.

Well you have my email, let me know and I will send you the invite. I use that chat with friends sometimes, it is quite fun. But there is only one drawback on Gmail chat, there is no ping option there, so one has to kind of make sense what the other person is replying to.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar It's something people hardly ever say, so there aren't many examples.

Arrowfar

oh okay. nods

tchrist

15:29

Unless her stick is actually walking around on its own somewhere, then walking in “walking stick” is a noun not an adjective. It is a stick that’s FOR walking, not a stick that IS walking. Yes, this is confusing!:) This is the difference between running water where running is an adjective; running shoes where it is a noun; and running scared, running drugs, and running quickly where it is a verb in all three. As a verb it might be a substantive use and get called a gerund, or it might be a modifier use and get called a participle. Or you may not be able to tell. — tchrist ♦ 6 mins ago

@snailplane ^^^^^^^ I don't see how we'll ever get these -ING words’ classifications and functions sorted out for the general public or for learners.

Perhaps it is not worth attempting then? Dunno.

Færd

tchrist

Water runners!

These people are always running contraband water over the border!

Odd how common run-ins are compared with runnings, eh? :)

Færd

Some people would pronounce them the same.

So we have four meanings for running water and water runner.

Two each.

Ice Girl

16:20

Hi all ;)

terdon

16:34

@tchrist Would you say that running can only be one of those at a time? I would claim that it is always a verb, whether it happens to be acting like one at the moment or not.

Færd

17:02

@IceGirl Hello!

Mitch

18:21

@Arrowfar That's exactly why I suggest a shorter sentence. The longer the sentence the more 'specific' (technical term) it is, eliminating lots of things. And it may end up eliminating what you really want, which is just the collocation 'jump into an offer'. To do good searches you want to include as many features as possible that are true of a thing but not include more that are just not that relevant.

search for 'jump into an offer' vs 'jump at an offer' (the latter is what sounds natural to me). I haven't done the search myself, so I'm just guessing (as a native speaker).

'first job' is just irrelevant to wither it is 'into' or 'at', so including it probably is what is removing good results.

Mitch

18:44

@Arrowfar I was trying to remove heat from the discussion by not asking what you think is the case, but what you think other people think is the case. E.g. you may have experience with the position that the general public has or the newspapers or the government has in both your country about nearby countries, and I probably don't have that.

Arrowfar

Hello Mitch!

Mitch

hey

Arrowfar

@Mitch I see, thanks. Yeah "at" is natural sounding, you are right.

Mitch

@Arrowfar but I could be wrong (but so could google and for that matter COCA or we could be using google or COCA wrong)

like ngrams, you have to understand what you're asking and what the results mean.

like eg a few years ago the OCR at google made the mistake a lot (maybe it still does) of the non-initial s in pre-1800's docs to be an 'f' (which frankly it looks exactly like).

so if you didn't also search for 'fit' when you wanted to find 'sit' you'd miss a lot.

Helmar

@snailplane iot.stackexchange.com/questions/357/…

Mitch

18:51

re politics: for example, I only recently read that Egypt is somewhat of a military rival of Saudi Arabia (there are 'concerns' between the two of them), when I thought the major powers there were SA and Iran. But frankly Turkey is probably the better equipped because of its association with NATO.

Arrowfar

@Mitch oh I know. I am perfectly comfortable with that. I meant to say I'm kind of reluctant to talk openly in (public) chats due to others. But since those discussions (politics etc.) are fun we can take them elsewhere, your call :) Here is fine too.

well, me personally, I am comfortable with any topic as long as the other person is level headed and possesses good people skills. Like you, you always get like 10 out of 10 in people skills from me, and seem very level headed so I never mind anything in your comments. But still I kind of stay back from some topics due to others. :)

@Mitch I see, I missed that. I haven't been following news closely lately. I'll Google etc. and take a look.

Mitch

@Arrowfar also news, or what I read, could have been misleading or I could have misread or all manner of mistakes things. I'm pretty sure nobody is worried about being attacked from Jordan or Kuwait.

Arrowfar

19:08

Yeah. nods

Anonymous

@terdon Certainly it's not a verb in his runnings to and fro.

Arrowfar

@Mitch Well, my dilemma is always which news source to trust. They all have a certain spin etc. So I read one thing at different places but that confuses me sometimes.

ANeves

I want to vent.

/me steps on the soapbox

Your community feels idiotic.
I make a comment asking someone not to answer in comments, my comment gets one upvote.
Someone replies to me not to use code-format to cite, and gets all the upvotes on their comment.
Seriously??
Isn't that a slight bit disproportionate?

bah

Andrew Leach

@ANeves I wouldn't worry about comments. If someone answers in a comment, feel free to make a real answer out of it.

Mitch

19:33

@ANeves I saw that. I think you were asking for it. Something like Muphry's_law? You were telling people not to do something, but did something that looks weird here. Also, why would you go the trouble to tell people not to answer in comments? You get the answer either way and really, isn't an aside about procedure sort of out of context of the question and better for a comment (if really you want to be that particular about your answers)?

@ANeves wait...which question? I can't find it...do you have a link?

ANeves

@Mitch the reply came to me as a surprise... I had used that style often before, and was never corrected. :p

(I do, give me a second.)

@Mitch I get the answer but I cannot edit it, or downvote it, so its quality cannot be controlled. And comments are ephemeral and could get discarded, etc.

here it is: english.stackexchange.com/questions/366148/…

Mitch

@ANeves Oh now I see, it wasn't your question, but you commenting on someone else's comment suggesting they make a real answer.

ANeves

@Mitch yes, that's it.

Mitch

Yes, there is a concerted community disdain (with reasonable argument) against answers in comments well-summarized by you.

But sometimes people feel like responding to a question that is not exactly on-topic for the community, and so would like to help the questioner but not waste trouble on a full answer that might get closed (or are unsure of or don't want to put work into an official answer.

tchrist

@ANeves Would it surprise you to learn that you are not the first person to express that sentiment? :)

Mitch

19:48

That question was by a long standing hi rep asker of many questions on ELU, but is not at all an authority on English Language. He was given a mod status as an honorarium and doesn't really perform mod duties.

tchrist

@ANeves Would you like me to edit it for you?

Mitch

His question about '400lber' was really a cultural question, about something in the news, and not really a question about English language itself (the question could have been made in any language and answered in any).

ANeves

I guess it would not surprise me.
It's fine to leave it as it is, thanks. The reply is fair, too; it just didn't feel too good.

tchrist

I'm sorry about that.

Wait.

This is Lightness.

Never mind.

ANeves

@Mitch I understand, Mitch, we had similar discussions in portuguese.SE , about on-topic-ness of some similar questions.

Thanks for listening. I felt the needed to vent and complaint a bit, and now I can forget it.

tchrist

19:54

Fixed.

ANeves

@tchrist You forgot the last comment.

tchrist

I see that now.

thanks

ANeves

<3

Mitch

@ANeves Oh yeah, I thought that, even though your comment was too 'SE/mod police' the response to your comment was a little... in your face. So, well vented!

ANeves

20:19

o/ cheerio

Færd

21:04

> And I would like for you to describe what happened on this night

> And I need for you to watch my back in case we run into a blabbermouth

(from COCA, along with dozens of other examples)

This redundant for seems not to be wrong, in colloquial speech, at least.

Seems to be an Americanism: books.google.com/ngrams/…

MetaEd

What did I do to earn this lovely feather boa?

Færd

Which is gaining acceptance in BrE, like many others.

Anonymous

It's not redundant, it's just optional.

Mitch

21:28

@snailplane ha! without redefining either, how are those different?

@Færd I say it... optionally

@MetaEd That's a rhetorical question right?

MetaEd

@Mitch Actually, no. I have no idea what I did.

@Mitch Ah. It's been discovered and posted. "Change your hat at least once daily for three (UTC) days in a row."

Mitch

@MetaEd Well, la tee dah.

the boa really brings out the color in your eyes.

Anonymous

21:53

@Mitch Redundancy is often obligatory.

Anonymous

And things that aren't redundant are often not.

Anonymous

Redundancy just means that something is expressed more than once. Sometimes that's required grammatically, as with subject–verb agreement.

Anonymous

Natural language is highly redundant, which is a good thing.

Anonymous

On the other hand, things that are only expressed once can sometimes be expressed zero times instead.

Anonymous

That's not redundancy because it hasn't been expressed more than once.

Andrew Leach

22:14

@Færd It's not.

MetaEd

23:13

@Mitch You're sweet to say that.

Mitch

23:46

@snailplane you're being amphibilous in your use of 'tedundancy'

A word imay obligatory if you aren't trying to express something even though the syntactic slit that word fills is not obligatory

If you're talking about a red truck and a green truck, red and green are not necessary in general but in the specific instance they are.

@MetaEd wait...no...it must have been the reflection of my own eyes that was so good looking.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…